Chapter Text
Tianlang-jun fought not like an Emperor, but like a cornered animal.
The ground around Bai Lu mountain had been a verdant forest. Now it was a mud pit, black and cratered. What little remained of the trees was on fire, the only source of light now that the sun had sunk beneath the horizon. An oppressive heat weighed on the smoke-filled night. Yue Qingyuan was reminded of heatwaves when he was small, the inescapable torment of it.
The plan had been to push back Tianlang-jun over the array nestled under the earth, the trap waiting to snap shut. And then, once he was held down, to collapse Bai Lu Mountain over him, sealing him forever. One or the other wouldn’t have held him; the two things together would do it.
But the earth had been overturned and all landmarks scattered. It was so dark. Nobody knew where to find the array anymore.
The battle shouldn’t have lasted that long. They were forty cultivators against one, ten from each Great Sect, and Huan Hua had promised them Tianlang-jun would be taken off guard by the ambush. And yet one demon alone had them in disarray, scattered on the field. Dozens were dead already. Tian Yi and Zhao Hua had sustained heavy losses, scrambling to fall back. Huan Hua dared not move forward lest they lost their seal specialists, who were crucial for a fortunate outcome. And Cang Qiong had just lost a peak lord. Yue Qingyuan was well aware of it, because he was the one currently attempting to staunch the man’s blood, and his efforts had just become pointless.
The day before the Cang Qiong delegation had left to fight, Yue Qingyuan had gone to see Xiao Jiu. Rarely did he dare to impose in such a manner, pulling rank as Xiao Jiu’s only shixiong in all of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect just to invite himself for tea. He had sat there drinking the worst brew Xiao Jiu had to offer. He had tried to tell him the real reason why he was leaving.
This is information I’m not supposed to share, he had cautiously begun.
That had not gone over well. Xiao Jiu had hissed he did not want his favoritism, and chased him from his house before Yue Qingyuan could add anything else. Even in this simplest of endeavors, Yue Qingyuan had been inadequate.
A blast of searing qi brought him forcefully back to the present. Someone was screaming, scrambling back from a shadow with burning red eyes, whose demon mark seemed to trail across the air like a guttering candle. Unfortunately, that shadow was being led right to Yue Qingyuan’s current position. If he ran too, the Emperor would just shoot the both of them in the back.
Yue Qingyuan rose and stepped in front of the Bai Zhan peak lord’s body, his hand finding Xuan Su’s hilt.
So far, as a disciple, he had acted as support, defending himself and others as needed. For that, he had not needed to unsheathe his sword. But now he was virtually alone on the battlefield.
Yue Qingyuan dared to lift a finger. Xuan Su jumped out eagerly from its sheath—only one inch—and the resulting wave of blinding white qi got Tianlang-jun to stop dead in his tracks. He whipped around, his prey scrambling away. His claws had fully come out, his fingers turned completely black with power. His hair was a shaggy mane, his face a dark mask with three glowing crimson holes in it.
Yue Qingyuan only noted these details as an aside, busy feeling like he had stabbed himself in the stomach. He breathed deeply, in and out.
Tianlang-jun was at his throat, striking like red lightning.
Yue Qingyuan parried with his still mostly-sheathed sword, the demon’s claws drawing a shower of sparks that briefly lit up the dark. From up close his heatwave qi was unbearable, a sweltering burn. Xuan Su came out a few more inches, each of them ripping Yue Qingyuan’s stomach open a little more. Tianlang-jun increased his own power in answer, matching him effortlessly, staring him dead in the eye.
“Well?” he said.
Then Xuan Su was out.
Yue Qingyuan did not think much further beyond that point. All he knew, from second to second, was that he was not dead yet. In the rush of his own life flowing away, he could not feel the demonic heat anymore. The world seemed devoid of color, bleached white by Xuan Su’s glare. There was only the red streaks of the demon’s surprised eyes, of his glowing mark, as Yue Qingyuan pushed him back, back, back.
And then the golden glow of the array humming to life, like dawn rising under their feet.
Yue Qingyuan had been almost certain he remembered roughly where the array was buried. How fortunate to have been correct. The Huan Hua specialists must have been watching him, waiting until Tianlang-jun was driven to the very center of the seals before activating them.
The Emperor clearly felt the trap engage, but by then it was too late. A spike of radiant energy speared out of the ground, right through his chest, piercing not his body but his cultivation. More went through his wrists, his arms, his shoulders. Another hooked him at the throat and brought him down—forced him to his knees, wrenching his arms back. Brought low, he stared at the swirling lines of the seals with something like disbelief.
Yue Qingyuan took his first breath since he had drawn his sword—and stumbled like he had stepped into an unexpectedly deep puddle. No: like his legs themselves had turned to water. The next moment his entire body went liquid and he spilled on the ground, hair and robes splayed out on the golden-edged mud. Xuan Su was out of his hand, pouring his life out in the murk. He had overextended.
Now someone will have to come drag me out of the array before they can collapse the mountain, was his very foolish thought.
The next moment he felt, more than he heard, the rumble of the oncoming landslide.
*
“—wake.”
There was a dripping noise.
“Really, who needs friends like these…”
His body was numb. His eyes must be open, because he could see a faint white glow reflecting off a very dark pool.
It was smaller and closer to his face than previously thought. He was lying on the ground. The pool was moving. Slithering towards him. He wanted to edge away, but Xuan Su was still unsheathed somewhere, spending his life in a great wasteful rush. He could not move.
The puddle reached his lips, touched them, then suddenly pushed into his mouth, making him gag.
“Take it all, be good, hm?”
It pushed further in, tried to shove its way down his throat. He retched again.
“Ahh… What’s the point, when they’ve abandoned you here?”
With the greatest effort of his life, Yue Qingyuan turned his head.
Tianlang-jun was there, still kneeling on the ground, his splayed arms now pinned to the rock weighing over him, bowing him down. The array haloed him with concentric chains of golden, unreadable characters. His hair had come undone, falling in long clumps over his face. Behind that shaggy curtain was the unrelenting crimson glow of his eye.
His voice was very warm and gentle.
“For all your heroics, they did not hesitate to sacrifice you.” There was a strain of effort as he spoke, his body holding up the mountain. “Such a poor reward, leaving you to—waste away in the dark with me.”
Yue Qingyuan should be so lucky. He only had a few minutes left before Xuan Su finished killing him. Still, he tried to resist what he was choking on. Perhaps that thing would kill him first? Strangely, he didn’t dislike the idea. Another end than the one written for him.
“Come now,” Tianlang-jun rasped. “Do you want to die?”
Or perhaps that thing would save him.
Yue Qingyuan knew he should choose death over whatever awaited him if he gave in. He retched again, dutifully. Xuan Su was bleeding the last of him. It would not be much longer now. He would die soon, escaping the Demon Emperor’s clutches, whatever his intent. He would—
He would leave Xiao Jiu behind—
Again—
*
Yue Qingyuan swallowed.
The dark thing slithered down his throat, alive and hungry. The next moment it jerked him upward, ripping through his innards like a hand shoved up a puppet. Through the blinding pain he felt it drag him towards Xuan Su, his fingers cracking open to grab it.
Yue Qingyuan wanted so desperately to sheathe it that a near-sob escaped him when he did not. Instead, his hand brandished it and sliced right through Tianlang-jun’s bindings, in a series of clumsy, jerky slashes, destroying the array.
There was a golden flash, a terrible rumble as Bai Lu Mountain started to collapse around their heads—but crimson power surged in answer, not just holding it up but pushing it up. Released, Yue Qingyuan fell to his knees again, holding his naked sword, incapable of moving to sheathe it.
In that last moment he wished, with perfect clarity, that he had never been born. Once again, a moment of weakness on his part had caused a catastrophe. He would die failing not just Xiao Jiu, but the cultivation world that should have been Xiao Jiu’s impregnable refuge. His death would bring no atonement.
Greedily, he died all the same.
*
When he came to, it was to the disturbing feeling of something squeezing his heart, again and again, as if trying to make it burst.
He was on his knees on a stone floor, his head hanging down. Moving only his gummy eyes, he looked down at his own chest, fully expecting to find it cracked open with a hand reaching into it. But there was nothing. For a moment he wondered why he wasn’t falling forward; then the faintest clink of metal told him that his wrists had been chained to the wall behind him.
A lamp was burning on the stone ground. He dragged his gaze further, and saw a sheathed Xuan Su lying there, as if carelessly thrown away.
“Ah, you’re awake,” said a voice somewhere close. “Not bad, for a dead man...”
This time, he managed to move his head. Tianlang-jun stepped out of the shadows, his hair still loose, his robes still dirtied and bloodied. There were large, blue-black stains on his pale skin—bruises, from the collapsing mountain. Yue Qingyuan felt that his own body was still crusted with filth and blood.
“The Xuan Su sword, hm?” Tianlang-jun said.
Yue Qingyuan was not surprised he had been recognized. He could not muster enough energy for fear. Barely even for thought. He was certain he was dead. He could feel it in the heaviness of his body, like meat. And yet…?
He could no longer hold his head up. A clawed hand grabbed his hair, pulled it back, turning his face to the light. “Hmm.” The demon brought his own wrist up and casually ripped it open with his teeth. “You need more.”
It pressed over Yue Qingyuan’s mouth, warm and slick. He could not keep the blood from sluicing down his throat. There was not enough life in him to retch or swallow this time, but once again the strange substance moved into his body by itself anyway, pushing and coiling down like a live snake.
His thoughts became less sluggish, his body more oxygenated. The beating in his chest was sharper now, faster. Tianlang-jun’s blood—
Tianlang-jun’s blood was making his dead heart pump.
“You know, this is their own fault,” Tianlang-jun said, airily. “I couldn’t have used you like this if they hadn’t sealed you in with me. Don’t we all get what we deserve?” He gave him more blood. Yue Qingyuan managed to retch this time, tried to move his head away, but Tianlang-jun’s grip on his hair was too firm—and a terrible, slicing pain stopped him anyway. He remembered how his dying body had been torn apart from the inside, tugged violently into movement.
Yue Qingyuan tried to speak, did not manage. But Tianlang-jun noticed and got curious. “Hm? Yes? What was that?” Something slick moved inside him; suddenly it was easier, his throat moistened for him, his lungs fluttering like gills. “Go on, tell me.”
Yue Qingyuan pushed the words out. “Is this—what you did—to Maiden Su—when you had her?”
Tianlang-jun abruptly let go of his hair; Yue Qingyuan’s head fell forward again.
For a long moment there was only silence.
Tianlang-jun crouched in front of him. “Ah, Xiao Yuan.” His tone was genial, almost cheerful. His eyes were two dark pits. “Don’t talk like that.”
And then he was moving away, blatantly changing the subject. “But it seems Huan Hua was not the first sect to use you!” He casually grabbed Xuan Su on the floor. Seeing those clawed hands turn her over curiously was enough to make Yue Qingyuan’s artificial breathing hitch. “Really, that thing… I wonder how you came to be like this?”
Yue Qingyuan watched as the demon’s fingers wrapped around the hilt—as they tightened and—
The blade was drawn out sharply, with a noise like snapping bone, and Yue Qingyuan flinched so violently his chains clinked. But nothing happened.
Nothing at all.
“Come now,” Tianlang-jun said, so very gently. “Who do you take me for? I don’t want to hurt you.” He sheathed the sword again, tossed it aside. “That thing, I believe, was bound to your life. You died: now it’s no longer bound to anything. Do you understand?”
Yue Qingyuan’s head was spinning. It was all too much. “…Why keep me like this?”
“Ah, Xiao Yuan, you don’t need all the details for now.” Tianlang-jun smiled at him, patting Yue Qingyuan’s blood-clotted hair. “Get some rest. It’ll take a while yet.”
Then he took his lantern and left him there in the cave, with that unnatural substance in his veins, squeezing at his heart, inflating and deflating his lungs. Slowly changing him from the inside.
Yue Qingyuan’s breath was very loud in his ears, quickening. In the dark. He was alone in the dark. He felt like his very brain was filling with blood, like he was drowning inside himself.
Before he entirely went under he managed to wonder one last thing—whether it would last a whole year this time, too.